The author of The Stories of English and How Language Works, David Crystal has been described by London's Times Higher Education Supplement as a "latter-day Samuel Johnson." Here Crystal sets off again on a delightfully discursive journey through the groves and thickets of the English language, combining personal reflections, historical allusions, and traveler's observations on a road trip from his home in Wales, through England to Poland, and as far as San Francisco. From pubs to trains to Tolkien, each linguistic side road he explores casts new light on the development of English as it is spoken today.

"At once chatty and sonorous, Crystal's prose never jars, even as it springs from subject to subject.... He ties place to subject and everything to words, their origins, habits and idiosyncrasies."—Independent (London)